The present invention relates to mobile communication devices, more particularly to automatically providing notification and location of lost or motionless mobile communication devices.
Mobile communication devices, such as cellular phones, laptop computers, pagers, personal communication systems (PCS), personal digital assistants (PDA), and the like, provide advantages of ubiquitous communication without geographic or time constraints, as well as the added security of being able to contact help in the event of an emergency. Advances in technology and services have also given rise to a host of “additional” features beyond merely voice communication including, for example, short or multimedia messaging, multimedia playback, electronic mail, audio-video capturing, interactive gaming, data manipulation, web browsing, and the like. Other enhancements, such as, location-awareness features, e.g., global position system (GPS) tracking, enable mobile communication devices to monitor their position and present their location via a local display.
Unfortunately, the easy portability of these devices often leads to misplacement and loss. Misplacement may involve merely forgetfulness by the user of one of several normal places at which the instrument was left, or the inadvertent failure to take the device when leaving a public or remote area. In either event, the user is deprived of the use of the device until it is retrieved. If the device is in fact permanently lost, immediate replacement of the device with a new instrument and service is necessary to minimize unauthorized use and divulgement of private or confidential information.
Accordingly, a need exists for automatically notifying a user of a mobile communication device of the possibility of its loss or misplacement. Provision of the location of the device in such notification would be beneficial to permit the user retrieve it and thereby avoid its permanent loss. A further needed benefit would be a capability to determine whether the device is situated in a normal location, and thus unlikely to be lost, or at a location of greater risk. In the former situation, the device may not have been misplaced if the user had intended its inactivity at the time, for example, while on travel. A need thus exists to provide the user with options to selectively deactivate loss notification entirely or for normal locations of the device.